Bakunin's Dream

Certainly not. If we perma-ZI'd everyone left, right, and center for reasons of "just in case" we would end up perma-ZI'ing a lot of people unnecessarily, and we have no incentive or desire for that. We use it in limited circumstances when our judgment indicates it is prudent. Just like any alliance decides whether and how to punish wrongdoers.

Or a reasonable belief based on factual knowledge and analysis. Because they're a spy?

Do you think you would consider it a "clean slate," start a new life, and not keep doing what you're doing if you deleted your nation and created Doitzel2? I don't either. If you really, truly want to reroll and cease being our enemy we have no interest in keeping you down, and if we get it wrong it is only to our detriment. It's why we try to get it right, but unfortunately sometimes people lie and the process is not 100% certain. If you want that you should be doing mathematics, not politics.

Exactly. This is a war game, and just because an enemy has zero infrastructure at this moment in time does not mean they are not still my enemy or they are not still a threat. I take my alliance's security seriously.

That's a great idea. We'll let anyone who's been caught spying on us, no matter how many times, reapply and we won't take their history into account in any way in their application. I wonder what the results of this will be!

How many times do they need to demonstrate that they have nothing but hostile intent no matter how many times they reroll before it is no longer prudent to give them the benefit of the doubt?

Oh oh, but if I recognize that this person is a reroll and make a decision based on what their previous character has done, I'm not respecting their status as a new person which is an OOC attack. What you seem to be arguing here isn't that taking action based on someone's previous nations isn't wrong as such, but rather that you think punishments across the board should be more lenient, which is quite a different argument.

Except it isn't if the only purpose of rerolling is because I believe it to be the most expedient way to continue inflicting harm on you (a motivation that belongs entirely with the original character).

That's nice. I'm somebody who cares about my alliance's security, so I don't think we're going to be leaving that loophole open. What if someone keeps rerolling with the intent of spying on our forums? Do you think that after the fifth time she's been caught in the act we should completely ignore her history the sixth time because "it's a completely new character" and such?

How the sweet Jesus is it a "past life" if all I'm doing with my new nation is using it as a means to the same end, for the same reasons, that I was pursuing before I rerolled? This is the principal contradiction in the anti-perma ZI argument: an almost religious refusal to conceive of what other reasons someone might have for rerolling besides "starting a new nation/character/whatever" that bears no relation to the old one.

Really? I don't know that.

I'm going to nuke you, reroll, build up to the point where I can do as much damage as possible, nuke you again, reroll, nuke you again, and continue ad infinitum for the rest of my existence. How many times would I have to do this before you might consider doing something about it?

You should talk to Moo about that because I'm looking at the actual list and I found yours highly inaccurate.

No it doesn't. The point was it's laughable to suppose that there would be anything north of an uncouth sneer from the Vox/Order-hater corner. They don't hate what we do, they hate us for being successful and the talking points of the day are transient and unimportant. In a world of change this is one thing that stays the same.

Okay but that's a different argument that I'd have a different response to. He was arguing that it's an "OOC attack" when it isn't. Speaking of that argument, it's nothing more than that old chestnut, "[it's] bad." Never mind why someone might receive this punishment, what motivations there could be for using it, and what various kinds of circumstances might dictate. That kind of unexamined categorical statement is exactly why I have a hard time taking this kind of rhetoric seriously.

Am I that bad at sarcasm?

OOC: It can be stopped by Admin. He posted in a thread and listened to people tell him why they thought he should stop it. He decided not to, not because he couldn't, but because he rejected their arguments and didn't want to rule something an "OOC attack" that clearly isn't. Everything you are saying was said there and it was decided that this argument does not hold water.

No and no. Any more guesses? Ah yes, that would invite nothing but praise from Vox and co. It's not like even now Doitzel is making the argument that the fact that we perma-ZI so few people shows that we're bowing to public pressure and, uh, evil or something.

I'm not denying that there was more than a bit of hyperbole in that, but the way you guys nail yourselves to the cross over this stuff is, well, Walford-esque.

OOC: This argument was considered and rejected by the very Admin you speak of, and it's wrong on its own merits for all sorts of reasons. If you want to look there was a huge thread a while ago with a lot of walls of text hashing out all the arguments.

I'm not accepting the validity of your analogy because murder is hardly comparable to punishing someone for their actions, but all things considered, yeah it probably would have been better if you could have stopped the holocaust than if you could stop one person somewhere from dying.

I guess the difference between you and me is that I don't count one person who is probably on such a list for a very good reason as THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE WORLD LET'S MAKE 100 THREADS ABOUT THIS AND TALK ABOUT IT FOR YEARS. And I didn't misread; I just know a derailment attempt when I see and sometimes I can stop myself from taking the bait. You're the majority but that won't quite get you to five!

It's internal in exactly the same way that any alliance dealing with a rogue is internal. I don't tell other alliances how they can and cannot punish people who mess with them.

Name five people on the NPO's perma-ZI list and five people on IRON's perma-ZI list.

Cool, good thing I'm not a "world policeman" or else I might be trying to meddle in their internal policies.